


Fragmented

by Wind-up Basilisk (windupbasilisk)



Category: Magic Knight Rayearth
Genre: Gen, Melodrama, Pre-Het, duty uber alles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windupbasilisk/pseuds/Wind-up%20Basilisk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Presea learns that rebuilding is reshaping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragmented

**Author's Note:**

  * For [possibilityleft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilityleft/gifts).



Presea rested.

She'd gotten ill-used to the practice in her five years as Pharle. Some swordsman or archer or other was always knocking, carrying iron or silver or copper, asking for new weapon after new weapon.

(Perhaps that was why crafting the Escudo weapons had been so damnably hard: she'd had to make all the weapons they would become, as well.)

It wasn't as if Cephiro hadn't been a peaceful land. She'd gotten as many requests for ploughshares as for swords; as many for trinkets, even, as anything else. But it was the weapons she dwelled on, now.

Presea took another sip of tea, and sneezed. Her house had gotten dusty: she was accustomed to cleaning up Mokona's messes constantly, and it was hard to remember to also reverse simple entropy.

She missed the little brat for his own sake, too. Or its. She'd taken an apprentice not long iinto her tenure as Pharle, but he hadn't lasted: he'd been too thin-skinned to appreciate the affection behind her threats, and too unambitious to exert the force of will required for Cephiran smithing.

It was sometimes lonely, living at the edge of the forest with her books. Friends were well and good, but there was something reassuringly annoying about having someone underfoot. Taking care of Mokona had been a nice reminder of that.

Presea was jolted out of her admittedly maudlin reverie when the world rumbled outside her door. That was a barely adequate way to describe it, but. It wasn't quite a noise, and (to the extent that it had been one) it was a far stranger sound than the monsters' now-familiar roar. It wasn't quite an earthquake, either, which was why Presea could barely describe it within her own head; when the very land shudders, isn't that the description of an earthquake?

She debated going to the balcony and looking out, but (she thought, ruefully) it had been so hard even to get up and stagger here from Eterna, so hard even to stand in the kitchen long enough to make tea. Even if she made it to the balcony (an open question) did she really want to undo its bolt and defend her exhausted self from whatever was out there?

It, whatever it was, had rattled through her bones in a way that left no doubt as to its essential badness.

She probably couldn’t even make it to the workshop to see if her tools were still in place, she thought wryly. Now there was something it was practical to be upset about. Presea felt the annoyance settle in; it displaced some of the odd despair she’d felt, made her feel less tired and more herself.

Someone knocked at the door. Presea snorted; she’d apparently have to get up after all. “Who is it?” she yelled, and braced her arms against her chair’s deep cushions.

“Guru Clef!” came the reply, rendered faint by the thick stone wall.

“Come in!” she shouted back, relieved and for many reasons. Clef had, after all, made the locks: he’d needed her permission to bypass them, but she didn’t need to get up to unlock the door for him. It would be good to see him, too, while she was so exhausted. He’d been a good friend to her as a young Pharle. 

Cephiro’s reliance on will made age more amorphous than it was many other places. Princess Emeraude herself seemed a child, often, though Presea knew she was forty easily: she’d been Pillar all of Presea’s twenty-six years. Still, twenty-one had been young to attain the rank of Pharle, and it was sometimes hard to not be intimidated by Cephiro’s other leaders - she was thankful for Clef’s guidance when she discharged her political duties, and even more thankful that those duties had so far been few.

But, beyond that assistance, Clef had just been good to have around.

He stepped in. “I bear bad news, Master Artisan,” he said, formally and too calmly.

Presea bit back an odd almost-disappointment and nodded, drawing herself up straight in her chair. “Cephiro just shook like it had cracked open. I had assumed such.”

“Princess Emeraude is dead.”

  
“Oh,” Presea said. She wasn’t stunned, precisely, but she couldn’t think of what to say next, and she knew she had to say something   
and   
Clef was looking at her with sympathy instead of grief and she couldn’t    
stand   
it. “But, why?” she finally stammered out. “Why would Zagato kill her, after keeping her kidnapped for so long?”

Clef shook his head. “Zagato didn’t kill her,” he said. “She died while the Magic Knights were trying to -” He broke off. “I can’t tell you that. I was going to tell you she died in the rescue attempt, Presea, and that’s true in the most literal sense but it’s very misleading. I can’t lie to you like that.

“The Magic Knights killed Emeraude. That    
was   
the rescue attempt, Presea; that was always how they were to rescue her and Cephiro. They didn’t know either, until the moment.”

“Why. Why did they have to kill her? Did she know? Did you?” Clef opened his mouth to answer but Presea was only gathering steam. “Why didn’t you warn the Knights? Why didn’t you tell    
me   
?”

“Emeraude and Zagato had fallen in love,” Clef explained with that awful sympathy. “She no longer thought only of Cephiro, and could no longer serve as Pillar. But a Pillar cannot step down without dying, and she had too many years left to wait for a natural death.”

“That’s horrible,” Presea said.

“Yes,” said Clef. “That’s why only a few people can know.”  
  
“You’re used to this,” Presea accused, bitterly. “You’ve lived through, what, four Pillars’ reigns now? That’s why you’re so clear-eyed now.

“How could you not tell me the nature of my duty? At least - I’m what, the eleventh Pharle since you’ve been Guru? Did the others know?

“I don’t know whether yes or no would be worse,” she finished.

“Pharle Ombria knew,” Clef said. “He was there when the Pillar Uncillique died.” Then, less colorlessly, “Stop shaking. I know that didn’t answer your real question but there isn’t a good answer to that, and until I have a good answer I can’t make a good apology.”

Presea shook her head. “What do you think my ‘real question’ was?”

“It’s not why I didn’t tell you. It’s not even why I didn’t trust you. It’s whether me trusting you to keep this a secret would have been a good thing.

“You know your duty. I know mine too well. I wanted to spare you that.”

“Don’t patronize me, Clef,” Presea said, but she was calmer now. “I know my duty too well    
now   
. You spared me nothing, in putting this off.”

Clef nodded. Another shudder rippled through the earth and air and aether. “I know, Pharle Presea. But your duty now is to build shelter, that Cephiro’s people should not suffer overly while a new Pillar is found.”

“And I’ll fill that duty,” replied Presea. “But tell me: when did Emeraude learn of the cost?”

“During her Pillar’s test,” Clef answered. “But once you’ve begun the test it’s too late to refuse.”

Presea nodded. “Did you consider your silence, before, part of your duty?”

“For better or worse, yes.”

“I do not consider it mine,” Presea warned. “Could you help me gather my tools? I am still quite tired, and will need all my remaining will to help with the rebuilding.”

Clef took her hand, and helped her up.

* * *

Most of the castle had learned to sleep deeply, by now, to ignore the steady thrum of their world shattering about them and to wake with sufficient energy for each newly trying day. Presea envied them that trick.

Cephiro shook her awake, again, and this time after she opened her eyes she had to blink to clear a shimmery afterimage from them. It had outlined a shape on the wall across from her; she pulled a robe from the chair by her bed, drew it around her shoulders, and padded across the cold floor to investigate.

There was a gap: a ragged blank dark-grey space in the middle of the wall, that looked halfway like a hole and halfway like someone had glued scrap paper onto the wall’s stone. Presea reached for it, fascinated. It bit her fingers.

She grimaced, more in annoyance than pain; she should have known better. Still, this was a new thing - both in that it was a problem with the castle itself, which was scary as Emeraude’s residual magic was greatest there - and in that it was a new kind of hole in the world. Mostly, before, bits had just fallen off.

Presea hated to wake Clef, but he’d seen their world fall apart four times before; he would know whether this was new or not. More importantly, if it was new he’d need to know about it as soon as possible.

He was awake already; even from the hallway, she could hear voices from his room. The other’s was Umi’s, unless she missed her guess. Presea frowned. She refused to be jealous, but this was the second time in as many nights that Umi had chosen to keep Clef up with her worries.

Presea knocked, and waited a second before entering. Umi was standing at the window, looking up at the Roads’ eerie phosphorescence.

“Hikaru, in Rayearth, entered Autozam’s Road,” Clef said, as she entered.

“I know,” said Presea. “I helped get her to bed, after."

Umi turned. “Fuu and I tried to follow. We couldn’t. It worries me.

“She’s too selfless. Whoever she saw, on Autozam’s road, set off her savior complex. She might pretend otherwise, but this is Hikaru. She can’t hide anything to save her life.”

“Umi’s right, Clef,” said Presea.

Clef stared straight ahead. Presea blinked. His eyes held the same pity they’d borne when he’d told her of Emeraude’s death.

“You’re worried Hikaru will become the next Pillar, aren’t you?” she asked them.

“She knows the price,” Clef said. Presea could hear the bitterness that subtly lined his voice. She wasn’t sure if Umi could.

Umi flinched. (So she couldn’t.) “Hikaru won’t stop at merely accepting Cephiro’s burdens. She’ll take on everything, and burn out so fast.”

“You have to fight for yourself, Umi,” Clef said. “This isn’t a world that’ll catch you if you forget that.”

“I’d like another sleeping potion,” Umi said, after a silence not quite long enough to be awkward.

Clef went to his cabinet, quietly, and drew out a premixed bottle for her. She left quickly.

“Let her be upset,” Presea said. 

“It would be a solution,” he replied, still bitter, still pushing it hard down.

“Nonsense,” Presea shot back, briskly. “She has her own world to worry about; family and friends anchor her there. Cephiro would only crumble further under her reign.”

Clef turned to look at her, intent.

“You’re not the only one who can be pragmatic,” she said. “She knows the price, yes, and like Emeraude she’s naive enough to think she can pay it only once.

“I think only someone that naive could possibly accept it. But anyone who goes in blind, like that, carries her destruction latent in her heart. It’ll only damage our world further.” Presea left the moral argument hanging in the air between them. They’d heard and said both sides of it so many times in the last few days, and it had hurt enough in the abstract. When applied to a friend, it was too heartbreaking to look at straight on.

Judging from Clef’s expression, her retreat was probably wise.

But her mouth carried on ahead of her brain. “That’s why you’re not Pillar, isn’t it? You can’t make that bargain yourself; you haven’t told anyone before because you can’t imagine them making that first bargain knowingly either. It terrifies me that you’re probably right.”

“Have you thought that since I told you?” Clef asked, quietly.

Presea couldn’t answer.

“The Pillar has to love Cephiro utterly,” said Clef thoughtfully, as if working his way through a lesson. “She makes it from the things she loves: from the virtues she holds highest, and the flaws she’s a weakness for. But she must love Cephiro itself above and beyond those things.

“Presea, how can I love a world that eats its children?

“I’m not afraid,” he said, voice low and a little faster than usual. “Please believe that; please don’t think I’ve made some    
career   
of pushing people towards a sacrifice I was myself unwilling to make. I haven’t turned back from the Road, Presea. It has never opened to me. And my doubts must be why.”

Silence stretched between them. “Another part of our world’s disappeared,” said Presea, more to fill it than anything. “It woke me up.”

“That shouldn’t be enough to scare you, by now,” Clef replied.

Presea thought about protesting courage, then thought better of it. “It’s different,” she said. “I don’t mean that another piece has fallen away; I mean that it’s    
disappeared   
. Part of the castle, no less. I didn’t know whether that was normal, or not.”

“There’s no normal,” Clef said. “The world is different every time; it falls apart differently, too.” He extended an elbow, pointedly ignoring the way his height undercut the gesture’s gallantry. “But I may be able to tell you, despite that, whether to panic or merely worry.”

“I’m too exhausted to panic, anyway,” Presea said, letting herself lean on his arm. She’d meant it as joke, but Clef accepted her weight as if he’d caught the truth her light tone belied.

* * *

Clef had told her Cephiro would inevitably change: he’d warned her that the air would taste different, that the grass would reflect sunlight strangely, that the birdsongs’ rhythms would subtly alter. All these things had happened.

The people had changed, too. She hadn’t known to expect that. But it couldn’t be otherwise: Emeraude’s story had burned through Cephiro after she’d made it public, and Hikaru’s abolition of the Pillar system had only partly salved her people’s anger with hope.

She was Pharle; a leader, if not the leader. And she knew that each of the smaller leaderships mattered more in a Pillarless world.

Presea stopped still, momentarily, as she walked home through what had been the Forest of Silence. It was hard to shake off her earned paranoia, and now that everything was    
different   
even the sound of her shoes against the underbrush was unfamiliar and potentially worrisome.

It had been her shoes again. She laughed quietly and kept on.

Oh, but here was another grey patch of nothing. Hikaru hadn’t filled them all in yet; her abdication had placed severe limits on her power, and so much of what she did have was going towards healing Eagle’s coma.

Presea was mostly able to not begrudge her that. But it was hard; her people were cranky, and it was arguably her job to reflect that crankiness upward.

Still -- Presea pursed her lips and stared at the blank grey surface. Hikaru might have given up her power, but it wasn’t as if it had left Cephiro. It had just left Hikaru.

Presea wrapped a white ribbon around one arm, and a green cloth around the other; she put her hand next to the gap, almost but not quite close enough to be bitten, and reached down deep inside herself. She’d tapped an unfamiliar well when she’d made the Escudo weapons, one that had wanted to give and give of her energy til she’d nothing left - that seemed appropriate, if dangerous, now.

The green cloth floated upward, and encircled the grey. Presea felt a grin of triumph bubble up as it tightened and tightened; it drew her hands inward with it til they clapped together. In that instant gravity resumed. Presea dropped her arms and saw a perfectly ordinary stretch of forest. It was new, and different, but somehow its unfamiliarity was no longer disorienting.

She began to jog home, ignoring the part of her brain that equated the constant strangeness with danger.

Clef would be there, and she finally had something that she could teach him.


End file.
